英语词源字典 - 在线词源网站

a: a: [OE] The indefinite article in English is ultimately identical with the word one (as is the case, even more obviously, in other European languages – French un, German ein, and so on). The ancestor of both a(n) and one was ān, with a long vowel, but in the Old English period it was chiefly used for the numeral; where we would use a(n), the Anglo-Saxons tended not to use an article at all. Ān begins to emerge as the indefinite article in the middle of the 12th century, and it was not long before, in that relatively unemphatic linguistic environment, its vowel became weakened and shortened, giving an.

And at about the same time the distinction between an and a began to develop, although this was a slow process; until 1300 an was still often used before consonants, and right up to 1600 and beyond it was common before all words beginning with h, such as house.
=> one
an: an: [OE] The indefinite article in English is ultimately identical with the word one (as is the case, even more obviously, in other European languages – French un, German ein, and so on). The ancestor of both a(n) and one was ān, with a long vowel, but in the Old English period it was chiefly used for the numeral; where we would use a(n), the Anglo-Saxons tended not to use an article at all. Ān begins to emerge as the indefinite article in the middle of the 12th century, and it was not long before, in that relatively unemphatic linguistic environment, its vowel became weakened and shortened, giving an.

And at about the same time the distinction between an and a began to develop, although this was a slow process; until 1300 an was still often used before consonants, and right up to 1600 and beyond it was common before all words beginning with h, such as house.
=> one
aim: aim: [14] Etymologically, aim is a contraction of estimate (see ESTEEM). The Latin verb aestimāre became considerably shortened as it developed in the various Romance languages (Italian has stimare, for instance, and Provençal esmar). In Old French its descendant was esmer, to which was added the prefix a- (from Latin ad- ‘to’), producing aesmer; and from one or both of these English acquired aim. The notion of estimating or calculating was carried over into the English verb, but died out after about a hundred years. However, the derived sense of calculating, and hence directing, one’s course is of equal antiquity in the language.
=> esteem, estimate
April: April: [14] Aprīlis was the name given by the Romans to the fourth month of the year. It is thought that the word may be based on Apru, an Etruscan borrowing of Greek Aphrō, a shortened version of Aphroditē, the name of the Greek goddess of love. In that case Aprīlis would have signified for the Romans ‘the month of Venus’. English acquired the word direct from Latin, but earlier, in the 13th century, it had borrowed the French version, avril; this survived, as averil, until the 15th century in England, and for longer in Scotland. The term April fool goes back at least to the late 17th century.
=> aphrodite
caravan: caravan: [16] Caravans have no etymological connection with cars, nor with char-a-bancs. The word comes ultimately from Persian kārwān ‘group of desert travellers’, and came into English via French caravane. Its use in English for ‘vehicle’ dates from the 17th century, but to begin with it referred to a covered cart for carrying passengers and goods (basis of the shortened form van [19]), and in the 19th century it was used for the basic type of thirdclass railway carriage; its modern sense of ‘mobile home’ did not develop until the late 19th century. Caravanserai ‘inn for accommodating desert caravans’ [16] comes from Persian kārwānserāī: serāī means ‘palace, inn’, and was the source, via Italian, of seraglio ‘harem’ [16].
=> caravanserai, van
console: console: [14] Console means literally ‘offer solace’. It comes from Latin consōlārī, a compound verb formed from the intensive prefix com- and sōlārī ‘comfort’ (source of the Latin noun sōlātium, from which English gets solace [13]). English acquired it either directly, or via French consoler. The Latin agent noun derived from consōlārī was consōlātor ‘comforter’, which passed into French as consolateur. This came to be used as an architectural term for a carved human figure supporting a cornice, shelf, etc, and was eventually shortened to console; this was borrowed into English in the 18th century.
=> solace
curtail: curtail: [16] The now defunct English noun curtal meant ‘horse with a docked tail’. It was borrowed in the 16th century from French courtault, a derivative of the adjective court ‘short’. Like English curt [17] this came from Latin curtus ‘cut off, shortened’, which in common with English short and shear, can be traced back to an Indo-European base *ker- or *sker- ‘cut’. In the late 16th century the noun was converted into a verb, originally meaning literally ‘dock a horse’, and the close semantic link with ‘tails’ led to its alteration to curtail.
=> cuirass, curt, shear, shirt, short, skirt
dub: dub: English has two words dub. By far the older, ‘create a knight, name’ [11], was one of the first linguistic fruits of the Norman conquest, which was during the Middle English period to contribute such a vast number of French words to the English language. It came from Anglo- Norman duber, which was a reduced form of aduber, the Anglo-Norman version of Old French adober.

This meant ‘equip, repair, arrange’, but also specifically ‘equip with armour’, which led metaphorically to ‘confer the rank of knighthood on’. The sense ‘arrange’ has remained in use in various technical areas up to the present time, and its application to the dressing of leather with grease formed the basis of the noun dubbin ‘mixture of oil and tallow for softening and waterproofing leather’ [18]. Dub ‘insert soundtrack’ [20] is a shortened version of double.
=> dubbin; double
feisty: feisty: [19] Feisty, nowadays a colloquial Americanism for ‘quarrelsome’ or ‘spirited’, originated in Middle English as a term for a ‘farting dog’. It goes back to the now obsolete English verb fist ‘fart’, which came ultimately from Indo-European *pezd- (source also of Latin pēdere ‘break wind’, whence English petard ‘small bomb’ [16], as in ‘hoist with one’s own petard’); like *perd-, the Indo-European ancestor of English fart, this was probably of imitative origin.

In the 16th and 17th centuries the expression fisting dog, literally ‘farting dog’, was applied contemptuously to a ‘mongrel’ or ‘cur’. This eventually became shortened to feist, and (mongrels being notoriously combative) feisty was born.
=> fizzle, petard
GI: GI: [20] GI originated, around the beginning of the 20th century, as a US abbreviation of galvanized iron. It was soon in common use in the military, in contexts such as GI can, and the idea seems to have got about that it stood for not galvanized iron but government issue. This misconception propelled it into such combinations as GI shoe, GI soap and (facetiously) GI soldier. By the 1930s this had been shortened to simply GI, designating an enlisted man in the US Army.
hobby: hobby: Hobby in the sense ‘pastime’ is short for hobbyhorse. This originated in the 16th century as a term for the figure of a horse used in morris dances: the element hobby, used since the 14th century for a ‘small horse’, was derived from Hob, a pet form of the man’s name Robert or Robin which survives also in hobgoblin [16]. From the morris-dance hobbyhorse was descended the toy hobbyhorse, a stick with a horse’s head on top; and the notion of ‘riding a hobbyhorse’, which could not actually take you anywhere, passed metaphorically into ‘doing something only for amusement’ – hence the meaning ‘pastime’, first recorded for hobbyhorse in the 17th century and for the shortened hobby in the early 19th century. Hobby ‘bird of prey’ [15] comes from Old French hobet, a diminutive form of hobe ‘small bird of prey’, whose origins are not known.
=> hobbyhorse, hobgoblin
hocus pocus: hocus pocus: [17] Hocus pocus came from a phoney Latin phrase – in full hax pax max Deus adimax – used by travelling conjurers to impress their audiences. It was originally used for such a ‘conjurer’, or for a ‘trickster’ in general (‘a Persian hocus pocus performed rare tricks with hands and feet’, Sir Thomas Herbert, Travels into Africa and the Greater Asia 1634), but this had largely died out by the end of the 17th century, leaving ‘trickery, deception’ in full possession. Hoax [18] probably originated as a shortened version of hocus.
=> hoax
job: job: [16] The origins of job are uncertain. Its likeliest source is an earlier and now obsolete noun job which meant ‘piece’. It is quite plausible that job of work, literally ‘piece of work’, could have become shortened to job. But where this earlier job came from is not known, so the mystery remains open.
lunge: lunge: [18] ‘Length’ is the etymological notion underlying the word lunge. It comes ultimately from French allonger ‘lengthen’, a verb based on the adjective long ‘long’. Its fencing application derived, in French, from the idea of ‘extending one’s sword to strike a blow’. It was originally borrowed into English in the 17th century as allonge, but this was soon shortened to lunge.
mantle: mantle: [13] Mantle comes via Old French mantel from Latin mantellum ‘cloak’, a word of uncertain (possibly Celtic) origin. Related forms to find their way into English from other languages include mantilla [18] (a Spanish diminutive of manta ‘cape’, which came from Latin mantus, a shortened form of mantellum) and mantua, a term used in the 17th and 18th centuries for a woman’s loose gown, which arose from the association of modern French manteau with the name of the Italian city of Mantua, once famous for its silks. And the mantel [15] of mantelpiece is a variant spelling of mantle.
=> mantel
mend: mend: [12] Mend originated as a shortened form of amend [13] – or rather, of the Old French source of amend, which did not arrive in English until after mend. The Old French verb was amender, a descendant of Vulgar Latin *admendāre ‘remove faults, correct’. This in turn was an alteration of classical Latin ēmendāre (source of English emend [15]), a compound verb formed from the prefix exdenoting ‘removal’ and menda, mendum ‘fault, defect’. (Other Latin derivatives of mendum were mendīcus ‘injured’, which was used as a noun meaning ‘beggar’ – hence English mendicant [15]; and perhaps mendāx ‘speaking faultily’, hence ‘lying’, from which English gets mendacious [17].)
=> amend, emend, mendicant
miss: miss: English has two words miss. The one used as a title for an unmarried woman [17], which originated as a shortened form of mistress (see MASTER), is a comparatively recent introduction, but the verb miss [OE] has a much longer history. It comes from a prehistoric Germanic *missjan (source of German and Dutch missen, Swedish mista, and Danish miste), which was derived from the base *missa- ‘wrongly, amiss’ (ancestor of the English prefix mis-).
=> master
noisome: noisome: [14] Noisome has no etymological connection with noise. Its closest English relative is annoy. This had a shortened from noy ‘trouble, annoy, harm’, current from the 13th to the 17th centuries, which was combined with the suffix -some to form noysome, later noisome, ‘harmful’.
=> annoy
opossum: opossum: [17] Opossum comes from aposoum, a word in Virginia Algonquian meaning literally ‘white animal’. The shortened form possum is virtually contemporary with it. When referring to the animal, opossum is now the more usual term, but possum holds its own in the expression play possum ‘feign death or sleep’. Dating from the early 19th century, it alludes to the opossum’s habit of pretending to be dead when threatened.
plaster: plaster: [OE] Like plastic, plaster comes ultimately from the Greek verb plássein ‘mould’. Combination with the prefix en- ‘in’ produced emplássein ‘daub on, plaster’. From its past participle emplastós was derived émplastron ‘medicinal application to the skin’, which reached Latin as emplastrum. Medieval Latin shortened it to plastrum, which Old English adopted as plaster. Its use for a ‘soft substance spread on walls, etc’ was introduced via Old French plastre in the 14th century.
=> plastic
poodle: poodle: [19] The ancestor of the modern poodle was a water-dog, used probably in the hunting of water-fowl – very different from the effete toy variety of today. Its name reflects its aquatic origins: in German it is pudelhund, the first element (a relative of English puddle) being from Low German pudeln ‘splash about in water’. This was shortened to simply pudel, the form in which it was acquired by English (and indeed other languages: in Swedish it is pudel, in Dutch poedel).
=> puddle
precise: precise: [16] Something that is precise is etymologically ‘cut off in front’. The word was acquired via French précis (subsequently borrowed as the noun précis ‘summary’ in the 18th century) from Latin praecīsus, an adjectival use of the past participle of praecīdere ‘shorten’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix prae- ‘in front’ and caedere ‘cut’ (source also of English concise, decide, excise, etc). The notion of being ‘shortened’ gradually slipped via ‘expressed shortly, leaving out extraneous matter’ to ‘exact’.
=> concise, decide, excise, précis
prude: prude: [18] Old French prudefemme ‘virtuous woman’ meant literally ‘fine thing of a woman’. It was a lexicalization of the phrase *preu de femme, in which preu meant ‘fine, brave, virtuous’ (its variant prud gave English proud). In the 17th century it was shortened to prude (Molière is the first writer on record as using it), with distinctly negative connotations of ‘overvirtuousness’. It was borrowed into English at the beginning of the 18th century, and for a couple of hundred years continued to be used almost exclusively with reference to women.
=> proud
puzzle: puzzle: [16] The origin of puzzle is, appropriately, a puzzle. One suggestion is that it may be derived from the now obsolete verb pose ‘interrogate, perplex’ (which survives in poser ‘difficult question or problem’), a shortened form of appose ‘interrogate or question severely’. This came from Old French aposer, a variant of oposer, from which English gets oppose. Another possibility is some connection with the Old English verb puslian ‘pick out the best bits’, which is reminiscent of puzzle out ‘find or solve by laborious reasoning’ (although that sense of puzzle is not recorded until the end of the 18th century).
rickshaw: rickshaw: [19] Rickshaw is English’s attempt to domesticate Japanese jin-riki-sha. These small two-wheeled man-hauled vehicles were introduced in Japan around 1870, and their name, which means literally ‘man strength vehicle’, had made its way into English by 1874. By the 1880s it had been shortened to rickshaw.
scapegoat: scapegoat: [16] In biblical times the ritual of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, included a ceremony involving two goats: one was sacrificed to God, and the other was sent off into the wilderness as the symbolic bearer of the people’s sins. This second goat was termed ‘azāzēl. That appears to have been a proper name, said in Jewish tradition to be that of a demon to whom the goat was sent, and may be linked with Aziz, the name of a Canaanite god.

Later commentators, however, interpreted it as equivalent to Hebrew ‘ēz ōzēl, which means ‘goat that departs’. In the Latin of the Vulgate, that was rendered as caper emissarius (whence the French expression bouc émissaire, literally ‘goat sent forth’), and William Tindale, in his 1530 translation of the Bible, expressed it as scapegoat (the first part, scape, is a shortened form of escape).

The modern metaphorical application to someone who takes the blame for others’ faults dates from the early 19th century.
scroll: scroll: [15] Scroll has no family connection with roll, although roll is largely responsible for its present-day form. Etymologically it is actually the same word as shred. Both go back to a prehistoric Germanic *skrautha ‘something cut’. This evolved in a straight line to give English shred, but it was also borrowed through medieval Latin scrōda into Old French as escroe, where its meaning ‘cut piece, strip’ narrowed to ‘strip of parchment’.

Its Anglo- Norman version escrowe was acquired by English, where it split in two. It survives in full as escrow [16], a legal term for a sort of deed, but a shortened form, scrow, also emerged, and association with roll (in the sense ‘roll of parchment’) led to its being altered to scrowle or scroll.
=> escrow, shred
sleuth: sleuth: [12] Sleuth originally meant ‘track, trail’ (‘John of Lorn perceived the hound had lost the sleuth’, John Barbour, The Bruce 1375). It was borrowed from Old Norse slóth ‘track, trail’, which was probably also the ultimate source of English slot ‘trail of an animal’ [16]. In the 14th century the compound sleuth-hound ‘bloodhound for tracking fugitives’ was coined. This was later shortened back to sleuth, and applied in 19th-century America to a ‘detective’.
=> slot
sound: sound: English has no fewer than four distinct words sound. The oldest, ‘channel, strait’ [OE], originally meant ‘swimming’. It came from a prehistoric Germanic *sundam, a derivative of the base *sum-, *swem- ‘swim’ (source of English swim). The sense ‘channel’ was adopted from a related Scandinavian word (such as Danish sund) in the 15th century. Sound ‘undamaged’ [12] is a shortened version of Old English gesund, which went back to prehistoric West Germanic *gasundaz, a word of uncertain origin.

Its modern relatives, German gesund and Dutch gezond ‘well, healthy’, retain the ancestral prefix. Sound ‘noise’ [13] comes via Anglo-Norman soun from Latin sonus ‘sound’, a relative of Sanskrit svan- ‘make a noise’. Amongst the Latin word’s many other contributions to English are consonant, dissonant [15], resonant [16], sonata [17] (via Italian), sonorous [17], and sonnet. Sound ‘plumb the depths’ [14] (as in sounding line) comes via Old French sonder from Vulgar Latin *subundāre, a compound verb formed from Latin sub- ‘under’ and unda ‘wave’ (source of English undulate).
=> swim; consonant, dissonant, resonant, sonata, sonnet, sonorous; surround, undulate
store: store: [13] Store is a shortened version of the now defunct astor ‘supplies, stock of provisions’. This was borrowed from Old French estor, a derivative of estorer ‘build, restore, furnish, stock’, which in turn came from Latin instaurāre ‘renew, repair, restore’ (source also of English restaurant and restore, and possible relative of Greek stavrós ‘stake, pale’). The use of store for ‘shop’ arose in American English in the early 18th century.
=> restaurant, restore
sum: sum: [13] Latin summus meant ‘highest’ (a meaning preserved in English summit [15], which is ultimately derived from it); it evolved from an earlier *supmus, a superlative form based on the stem of Latin super ‘above’ (source of English super). When the Romans counted up columns of figures they worked from the bottom upwards, and put the total on top – whence the use of the expression rēs summa, literally ‘highest thing’, for ‘total’. This was eventually shortened to summa, which reached English via Old French summe. Other derivatives in English include consummate [15] and summary [15].
=> consummate, summary, summit
tangerine: tangerine: [18] The tangerine was originally exported to Britain, in the 1840s, from the Moroccan port of Tangier, and so it was called the Tangerine orange (Tangerine started life as an adjective meaning ‘of Tangier’: ‘an old Tangerine captain with a wooden leg’, Joseph Addison, Tatler 1710). This was soon shortened to tangerine. It was first used as a colour term at the end of the 19th century.
tennis: tennis: [14] The earliest recorded English forms of the word tennis include tenetz, teneys, and tenes. These suggest that it probably came from tenez, the imperative plural of Old French tenir ‘hold’, hence ‘receive’, supposedly shouted by the server to his opponent as a warning to get ready to receive the ball. The word originally referred, of course, to what is now known as real tennis (in which the real does simply mean ‘real’; it has no connection, as is often claimed, with obsolete English real ‘royal’); it was first applied to the newly invented outdoor game in 1874, in the compound lawn tennis, and this was soon shortened to simply tennis.
=> tenant
twit: twit: Twit was originally, and still is, a verb, meaning ‘taunt’ [16]. It is a shortened version of the now defunct atwite. This went back to Old English ætwītan, a compound verb formed from the prefix æt-, denoting ‘opposition’, and wītan ‘reproach’. It is not altogether clear whether the noun twit ‘fool’ is the same word. There is an isolated example of what could be twit ‘fool’ recorded from the early 18th century, but it did not really begin to proliferate as a mild term of abuse until the 1950s.

Semantically, the connection is plausible – a ‘fool’ could be a ‘person who is taunted’ (presumably for being foolish) – but an alternative theory is that it is an alteration of twat [17]. This originally meant ‘cunt’, and is not recorded as a term of abuse until the 1920s. It is not known where it came from. (It was, incidentally, the object of one of the more ludicrous misapprehensions in English literature.

There is a passage in Vanity of Vanities 1660 that reads ‘They talked of his having a cardinal’s hat, they’d send him as soon an old nun’s twat’. Robert Browning took ‘twat’ as meaning some item of nun’s clothing, and so wrote in his Pippa Passes 1841 ‘Sing to the bats’ sleek sisterhoods full complines with gallantry: Then, owls and bats, cowls and twats, monks and nuns, in a cloister’s moods, adjourn to the oakstump pantry!’).
vaudeville: vaudeville: [18] In 15th-century France there was a fashion for songs from the valley of the Vire, in the Calvados region of Normandy (particularly popular, apparently, were the satirical songs composed by a local fuller, Olivier Basselin). They were known as chansons du Vau de Vire ‘songs of the valley of the Vire’, which became shortened to vaudevire, and this was later altered to vaudeville. It was originally used in English for a ‘popular song’; the application to ‘light variety entertainment’ did not emerge until the early 19th century.
vie: vie: [15] Vie is ultimately the same word as invite. It is a shortened version of the now defunct envie ‘make a challenge’, which came via Old French envier from Latin invītāre (source of English invite), a word of uncertain origin which meant ‘challenge’ as well as ‘invite’.
=> invite
ad (n.): 1841, shortened form of advertisement. Long resisted by those in the trade, and according to Mencken (1945) denounced by William C. D'Arcy (president of Associated Advertising Clubs of the World) as "the language of bootblacks, ... beneath the dignity of men of the advertising profession."
ad lib: 1811, shortened from Latin ad libitum "at one's pleasure, as much as one likes" (c. 1600), from ad "to" (see ad-) + libitum, accusative of libere "to please" (see libido). First recorded as one word 1919 (v.), 1925 (n.).
ago (adj.): early 14c., shortened form of Old English agan, agone "departed, passed away," past participle of an obsolete verb ago "to go forth," formed from a- "away" (perhaps here used as an intensive prefix) + gan "go" (see go (v.)). Agone remains a dialectal variant.
Alzheimer's disease: (senium præcox), 1912, title of article by S.C. Fuller published in "Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases;" named for German neurologist Alois Alzheimer (1864-1915). The name was not common before 1970s; shortened form Alzheimer's first recorded 1954. The surname is from the place name Alzheim, literally "Old Hamlet."
amend (v.): early 13c., "to free from faults, rectify," from Old French amender (12c.), from Latin emendare "to correct, free from fault," from ex- "out" (see ex-) + menda "fault, blemish," from PIE *mend- "physical defect, fault" (cognates: Sanskrit minda "physical blemish," Old Irish mennar "stain, blemish," Welsh mann "sign, mark").

Supplanted in senses of "repair, cure" by its shortened offspring mend (v.). Meaning "to add to legislation" (ostensibly to correct or improve it) is recorded from 1777. Related: Amended; amending.
ammo (n.): 1917, shortened form of ammunition.
ampere (n.): 1881, "the current that one volt can send through one ohm," from French ampère, named for French physicist André-Marie Ampère (1775-1836). Shortened form amp is attested from 1886.
amplifier (n.): 1540s; agent noun from amplify. Electronic sense is from 1914; shortened form amp is from 1967. Alternative stentorphone (1921) did not catch on.
apprentice (n.): c. 1300, from Old French aprentiz "someone learning" (13c., Modern French apprenti, taking the older form as a plural), also as an adjective, "unskilled, inexperienced," from aprendre (Modern French apprendre) "to learn; to teach," contracted from Latin apprehendere (see apprehend). Shortened form prentice long was more usual in English.
Aryan: c. 1600, as a term in classical history, from Latin Arianus, Ariana, from Greek Aria, Areia, names applied in classical times to the eastern part of ancient Persia and to its inhabitants. Ancient Persians used the name in reference to themselves (Old Persian ariya-), hence Iran. Ultimately from Sanskrit arya- "compatriot;" in later language "noble, of good family."

Also the name Sanskrit-speaking invaders of India gave themselves in the ancient texts, from which early 19c. European philologists (Friedrich Schlegel, 1819, who linked the word with German Ehre "honor") applied it to the ancient people we now call Indo-Europeans (suspecting that this is what they called themselves); this use is attested in English from 1851. The term fell into the hands of racists, and in German from 1845 it was specifically contrasted to Semitic (Lassen).

German philologist Max Müller (1823-1900) popularized the term in his writings on comparative linguistics, recommending it as the name (replacing Indo-European, Indo-Germanic, Caucasian, Jshortened) for the group of related, inflected languages connected with these peoples, mostly found in Europe but also including Sanskrit and Persian. Arian was used in this sense from 1839 (and is more philologically correct), but this spelling caused confusion with Arian, the term in ecclesiastical history.

Gradually replaced in comparative linguistics c. 1900 by Indo-European, except when used to distinguish Indo-European languages of India from non-Indo-European ones. Used in Nazi ideology to mean "member of a Caucasian Gentile race of Nordic type." As an ethnic designation, however, it is properly limited to Indo-Iranians (most justly to the latter) and has fallen from general academic use since the Nazi era.
attic (n.): "top story under the roof of a house," 1855, shortened from attic storey (1724). The term Attic order in classical architecture meant a small, square decorative column of the type often used in a low story above a building's main facade, a feature associated with the region around Athens (see Attic). The word then was applied by architects to "a low decorative facade above the main story of a building" (1690s in English) to convey a classical heritage where none exists, and it came to mean the space enclosed by such a structure. The modern use is via French attique. "An attic is upright, a garret is in a sloping roof" [Weekley].
auto (n.): shortened form of automobile, 1899; same development yielded French auto.
awake (adj.): "not asleep," c. 1300, shortened from awaken, past participle of Old English awæcnan (see awaken).
back (adv.): late 14c., shortened from abak, from Old English on bæc "backwards, behind, aback" (see back (n.)). Adverbial phrase back and forth attested from 1814.